drats

It matters in terms of statistics and machine learning. If, and that's if, these guys are correct then the data collection, pre-processing and normalization can have a large effect on the end result when you are trying to predict a trend or train a classifier. This is essential to good science and possibly more interesting to some of us than, say, a new node.js framework or a standing desk.

The argument they make for classifying the temperature sensors into different grades seems solid. There is a clear methodology extending from Leroy on how to class the sites into five different classes depending the surrounding terrain which we know affects the readings. They have used ground and aerial photography in giving the stations these classes using this methodology. So this isn't just a rehash of general Urban Heat Island arguments of the past it's a new, seemingly methodologically robust, chapter in that debate which must be answered by the other side. As it stands the best two classes of site have very good coverage over mainland USA and it's reasonable to compare them to the worst three classes of site. It turns out there is quite a large discrepancy between them[1]. This is science, not politics.

But, yes, the science has political implications. On that political side this is an issue worth addressing if we are going to put trillions of public money into dealing with the problem posed by climate change, according to the models which are operating on this very data. Redirecting those trillions has the potential to put the economic growth of billions of people living in extreme poverty on hold, no small matter. In light of that arguments like "if I, Prof. A., open-source my code and data Prof. B. will get a publication I want to write out before me" seem rather trivial. If your research says the public should spend trillions, you can expect to show your working and to be scrutinized heavily in public. On the face of it these results are huge, and I for one want to see them discussed and reviewed.

I don't think we should just accept arguments from authority - and even then, only a majority of the authorities, as there are dissenting professors from institutions like MIT and Cambridge - given the gravity of the consequences. Data processing, science, institutional incumbents versus disruptive outsiders, trillions of dollars: I think it is hitting a lot of HN notes actually.

[1]http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/watts_et_... And the normalization question is also at issue here beyond the different classes.

Flagged for the stupidest headline and "problem" I've read in a week.

Please don't use URL shorteners outside of tweets.

I disagree, it's a horrible service. I have a powerful up to date ICS android phone and their website totally denied me access to a document the other day due to incompatibility and crapness. Just give me the pdf, or even the ppt, I don't care, I don't need a middle man.

If people can't host those files there needs to be services to do that, i.e. Scribd needs to be killed by dropbox/google drive like services with a "public" folder or documents, not some intermediary. There is no reason for this crappy service to exist and every time I encounter it I am literally swearing under my breath it generates so much frustration in me. I can't wait for them to go out of business and for the employees and founders to do something productive with their lives.

Yes, it's always struck me that many 37signals posts are lathered in passive-aggressive envy regarding other businesses rather than just getting on with their own. The only good 37signals post I can remember that wasn't of that kind, or just trite advice, was the nice photos of their office environments. It constantly amazes me how much coverage they get on HN. But I guess a lot of people use RoR as a breadwinner and have a connection in that way to them.

If you look at another "builder of tools the community uses" like, say, Linus it's different. His blog doesn't really make it onto HN, as it's often personal, whereas his G+ posts sometimes do. His G+ posts are usually about something specific though rather than recycled trash from popular business / personal wealth books - not looking at anyone in particular - with some added passive-aggressive venom towards the more successful.

This is pretty trite nothingness, even for 37signals. I am not sure why it's been upvoted either as it's not even recent either.

Another point here is Amazon Silk caches/records a huge amount of your browsing, it's between the user and the web, and so does Opera Mobile (not opera desktop as far as I know). Facebook in this way will capture even more than they do through their ubiquitous "like" buttons which are constantly recording where everyone goes.

I also like "essage" and "assigned smart people" instead of "assign smart people" in a sentence talking about intelligence and spelling. He's probably not a native speaker but that only excuses the second bit, and only partly.

Even Parisians often flee Paris because of red tape and taxes, so if you add a foreign accent, or poor to no French, into the mix you are likely going to be going at a snail's pace. Berlin is cheaper, friendlier to business, friendlier to English and just friendlier in general on the street. The cheapness translates as a factor for employees (their home), and the international orientation of the city allows you to draw on a much broader potential labour force as tons more people from around Europe would consider a move to Berlin than to Paris.

I'd be fairly surprised if there was even a single metric on which Paris beats Berlin for anything business related, so unless you have a product specific to the French market or have a significant other in Paris who can't move it's Berlin every time. Even if you have a product specific to the French market it's probably be best to be outside France unless you need to be there in person to stroke the egos of bureaucrats who might regulate you out of existence.

Nice work, would be nice to see some kind of average for a weekday.

That page had a totally obnoxious in-page pop-up which half-loaded and took a full 15 seconds to load all the parts (background image of popup and importantly the close button).

If he's so upset he can always adopt some of their policies.

I like how they are saying he shouldn't have said it in public but have their contact information or real names in their profile while stating they agree with breaking contracts and screwing employees.

>Maybe you're right and Paul Krugman is wrong

Indeed (btw. where is Chile on the chart? can't seem to find it).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/05/04/paul-krug...

>It depends how you measure quality.

Aggregate stats across a number of areas plus opinion is a reasonable measure, albeit imperfect. Again I have provided many stats and figures and nobody has provided anything contrary other than assertions (and in one case cast some doubt over the Internet penetration). One would suspect that if the education is so good in Argentina people would have better researched arguments (ok that's a low blow, but people are downvoting). Feel free to provide another measure though. I don't think the roles will be reversed, though it might come out even under another measure as they are close in this one.

I think we broadly agree on your other point.

Wikipedia gave me those stats, but I checked the spreadsheet from the ITU they are based on and it's accurate.[1] Given the Chileans are richer it makes sense that they have 1 in 10 more people connected. Although I concede that the stats on this one point are contested.

I think you are being a little naive regarding countries. 26 years is extremely recent when we talk about countries and their institutions. I've also addressed dictatorship in another comment. The US comment is a red herring.

You seem to have misread me on inflation. I said it was three to six times the Chilean rate, not that the real rate was three to six times the official rate. I.e. if the Chilean rate is 3.something and yours is 10.something it's roughly three times more, but if your rate is actually 20 or 25 as some suggest you will be roughly six times higher than the Chilean rate. This is massively important to running a business of any kind.

I am not going to bother responding to your insults other than to say it's not appropriate on Hacker News (or anywhere) and there seems to be a lot of ego and patriotism from the Argentine commentators in this discussion. A criticism of a country is not a personal criticism.

This cheer-leading seems somewhat ill-considered, given your top global wealth early last century your country is practically a textbook cautionary tale. It's not an Argentine Yahoo! being compared to first world Googles either, it's more like someone at AltaVista claiming they are in the big leagues with Google because once upon a time they were good. To revert to weaker arguments: nobody I know would dispute this state of affairs as I have put it. And nobody would dispute that it's absolutely plausible that with good governance Argentina could have been as rich or richer than Japan right now, as rich or richer than Spain (and with far less debt than those two). But governments count, and you got some bad ones. Chile on the other hand is benefiting (albeit mildly) from making far better choices and it's clear to an outsider which is better and all data points to that (GDP, education, corruption, economic freedom, inflation). Either all those sources are wrong or my case holds. I don't see anyone from outside Argentina making the case that it's as wonderful as you people say. That's telling. Most good countries have people from outside showing them respect. For example, I admire some of what the Chileans have achieved and consider them better than quite a few first world countries now on a few metrics. They deserve praise and respect for that hard work getting things right. But respect is earned with work, not with claims of greatness that aren't backed up with anything other than insults.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...

Anecdotes are not data. The whole of South America is fairly mediocre vs. the world in education but Argentina doesn't seem to be ahead of Chile in a relative ranking. Chile has two unis ahead of your university, which is top in the country (although Argentina does make up some ground in the tail).[1]

The Spanish have a different story on the oil company. It's hardly an advertisement to set up a business there anyway, which is what I am talking about.

Finally, I don't think being the best government in Argentine history is a very high bar to reach. You were the 7th richest country in the world in the 1920s, with plenty of resources, and now a place starting poorer than you like Japan with hardly any resources (plus getting burned to the ground and nuked twice) is three or four times richer. There are tons of examples like that beyond Japan, the governments of Argentina have been a string of disasters in terms of providing for the people and not filling mass graves with them. Taking the current government though, I'd hardly say inflation three to six times higher than Chile is a great government. But when inflation in the past has been measured in hundreds of percent I concede that this could be a reasonable government when the only comparison is past Argentine governments.

[1]http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/latin-ame...

Who's correct on the inflation figures? The commentators saying it's about double what your government claims or your government? I am sure "a lot of business" gets done there, just not as much per capita as in Chile and far less than tons of other countries in the world. It's not "The Economist" vs "reality". It's The Economist, many other journalists and publications, Transparency International, the World Bank stats, the economic freedom index, other global statistics on education and indeed some commentators here with personal experience. Why are the non-Argentines with personal experience negative and the, presumably Argentine, people positive but unable to provide anything other than anecdotes. Sorry but on every objective measure I can find it's worse, or significantly worse, than Chile, and a long long way from the first world.

I am open to you providing links to enlighten me on some aspect or another of why it's so good. But even if the rankings were quite bias you are virtually at opposite ends to Chile on some. I mean even asking leading and bias questions with a specific agenda to make Argentina look bad it'd be hard to get such huge differences. Given everything else backs that up, and some commentators here with anecdotes are saying so too, you will have to forgive me if I discount your talk as misplaced patriotism until you can back it up with some form of links or stats.

I said the chance was "small", you are saying there is no chance but let's examine that a little more closely. First of all there is no country on earth that doesn't have some chance of descending into tyranny in a fairly short timespan if things go bad economically, we've seen it countless times. I wouldn't let your patriotism (I presume) blind you to that fact. So if we take the best governed countries and say the chances of dictatorship are "tiny", and in some of the less well governed first world countries it's "very small", then it's probably being quite kind to say an incredibly corrupt South American third (second?) world country on the brink of economic disaster only has a "small" chance of going badly.

I'll be the first to admit I am not an expert but to be frank from the outside you simply don't hear about people from either country, or the research records of their universities. Unless you can provide some metrics regarding the IT industry (and how do you measure "best hackers") it's all hot air. Going off the education levels and GDP per capita approaching 50% more in Chile, as well as the tech scene being incubated I find it hard to believe Argentina would have more or better hackers. 45% of Chileans are online vs 36% of Argentinians for example, over a whole population that adds up significantly. There are European backwater countries with far higher rates of education, money and Internet access so forgive me if I take your claims with a grain of salt.

That said, even with some other factor causing IT to be big and the number of hackers to be large it's all invalidated by the extremely poor governance. And yes, when you are only a few stops short of North Korea or Zimbabwe on many rankings there is a possibility you will go back into dictatorship (if you remember Argentina was a dictatorship very recently). Besides I said the chance of that happening was "small".

Edit: N.B. GDP per capita is closer if you go PPP. But that's a bit deceptive when you might be buying cloud hosting in USD or EURO so you not only have less in real terms in the Argentine case, but you are being wiped out by catastrophic inflation (from three to six times higher in Argentina depending on whether you believe the government statistics or those of the commentators).

But a lot of those factors apply to Chile and it's even quite close if friends and family are a factor. They are 88 places better on the corruption index and about 151 places better on economic freedom index, plus the government has an innovative technology accelerator program. Those are massive differences. Indeed it's probably one of the top differences for neighbours in the whole world besides North and South Korea. Chile also seems to have better education, as last I checked a significant portion of Argentinians haven't even completed primary school. But perhaps competition to hire talent is greater as well.

It seems to me Argentina is in a pretty dire situation at the moment. There is even a, small but real, possibility things could collapse into a failed state or dictatorship if the economic situation spirals out of control.

Edit: The economic freedom gap is actually bigger than South and North Korea! Argentina (158th of 179) is only just hovering above the failed states/dictatorships. I expect next years ranking will also be worse as things have gotten worse.

Argentina seems to be ranked as among the worst places in the world, besides actual war zones, in terms of economic freedom and political corruption type rankings. The currency isn't stable either and the government is appropriating private assets when they feel like it. You'd have to be insane to start a business there, but maybe the main topic of your meeting will be how to get out. I mean you could technically try to start one there, but you'd have to take a long look in the mirror first and answer the question "why not just move to Chile?".

The poor results on the map line up a fair bit with the cotton industry lines of the 19th century in this article http://bigthink.com/ideas/21383

Industry (dots) lined up with Obama voters from the article: http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/strangemapsov...

This is silly linkbait. Suffice to say a host of multi-billion dollar companies beg to disagree.

Only in the hyperventilating startup bubble world can tracking people around a shopping mall with wifi be cooler than tracking your position anywhere on earth with satellites that were put there by huge rockets.

Impressive but fake.

  It looks like it's a textured object before take-off.
  Inconsistent dust when taking off the first time. 
  His piloting of it is too good. 
  Needlessly fake distortions on the video feed. 
  No recoil on the video feed. 
  Sound too much like a helicopter and not an electric
  quadrocopter in first scene. 
  Weird recoil when it's in the air shooting.
  Doesn't interact with the dust properly in mid-air. 
  Lack of dust when on its way to the window. 
  Piloting far too perfect through the window.
  Final explosion does not center on the drone but other parts of the car. 
  He mentions it's going to be in an upcoming computer game.  

The reason people believe it's real is that the CGI is almost out of the uncanny valley and the rest is covered by the fact it's totally plausible. I have been waiting to see such a device for a few years now and there are no doubt quite a few similar machines in a prototype stage from various companies.

My favs from the "your programmer" comments:

"oDesk— Its work diary feature tracks the hours your programmer is working for you and takes screenshots of the programmer’s desktop at certain time intervals."

and

"Below is a screencast on how to upload an app to the App Store. As you’ll see, it’s a fairly confusing and tedious process. Best to leave this task to your programmers"

It's obvious that scarmig is parodying the comments Ruslan makes in the article and thus using the term "Orientals" to criticise and not in his/her own voice. Well perhaps it's not obvious to hyper-ventilating PC police so intent on keeping things "clean" you write a post attacking someone who likely agrees with you..

Edit: You were on the right track when you said "not to be overly sensitive" because even with your misinterpretation of scarmig you were still aware that you were being an annoying whiner.

Given what this is ranking I am surprised they are so high, this has nothing to do with market cap, cash on hand or the devotion of fans.

Presumably the horse has a human on its back which is a fairly significant encumbrance. "Man vs Horse+Man" might be a better name in that case.